The goals of this exploratory grant for a Digestive Diseases Core Center are to develop an application for an interdisciplinary, interinstitutional grant for a center in DIARRHEAL DISEASES. This center would have participants from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and from the North Carolina State University School of Veterinary Medicine. Specific aims of this exploratory grant are to: (1) enlist participants from both institutions, (2) formulate goals of such a center, (3) develop the necessary administrative structure for a center, (4) decide on the type and future location of core units, (5) decide on how many and the type of feasibility-pilot studies to be requested, and (6) decide on what kind of enrichment activity funds to seek in the grant. Presently, there are active, funded investigators at both institutions who are involved in research that relates to diarrheal diseases. Establishment of core units such as an epidemiology-statistics unit, lipid-prostaglandin laboratory, an histology-electron microscopy laboratory and/or an animal model diseases laboratory would materially aid many of the investigators at both institutions and would promote the amount and quality of research into the problem of diarrheal disease. Such an interdisciplinary effort would also allow feasibility-pilot studies in several areas such as the development of an inflammatory bowel diseases data bank, the development of clinical research units to determine the efficacy of new antisecretory-antidiarrheal and irritable bowel disease drugs, research into the role of oxygen radicals in intestinal mucosal cell death and damage, and research into the role of kinins in the diarrhea and inflammation of infectious diarrhea and inflammatory bowel disease.